By Steve Bargeton, political editor

ALMOST ONE in every five Scottish school children is skipping school to play truant, or going on holiday during term time.

School attendance and absence statistics, released yesterday, showed that about one million pupil days were lost in 2004/05 due to youngsters truanting, with 143,000 children—20% of all pupils—bunking off class at least once.

And 139,000 of Scotland’s 723,0000 pupils went on breaks during the school term, taking an average of five days off each.

Yesterday education minister Peter Peacock MSP warned parents to think twice before taking their son or daughter out of classes for a holiday.

“Children being taken on holiday during term time is almost on the same scale as truancy and parents need to think very carefully about whether that is absolutely necessary,” he said.

The latest figures show that, out of a possible total of 132,000,000 pupil days of attendance, 5,395,000 were lost because of sickness, truancy or holidays.

However, despite that gloomy picture, most pupils—some 79%—had an attendance rate of 90% or more, while about 34,000 youngsters—5% of schoolchildren—had a 100% attendance record.

The overall attendance rate for 2004/05 was 93%—down fractionally from the previous year when it was 93.1%.

Mr Peacock said that the Executive was looking at hi-tech methods of catching youngsters skipping school.

An automated call system, which gives parents early warning that their child has failed to turn up for classes, was piloted at one Edinburgh school and cut truancy from 4.41% to 2.07%.

“Truancy levels are too high. If a child is missing education this has profound implications for their future,” said Mr Peacock.

“We know a small percentage of pupils account for most truancy but too many are trying it for the first time.

“That is why we are backing schools with new investment to use automated call systems.

“Schools also need the active co-operation of parents—they have a duty to get their children to school.”

SNP education spokesman Fiona Hyslop said, “Attendance rates in our secondary schools have dropped.

“Around one in ten school days have been missed by pupils—this is simply not good enough.

“It’s not good enough for Peter Peacock to blame the parents—the indiscipline problems have not been addressed and the self-respect of pupils is suffering as a result.”

For the Scottish Tories, James Douglas- Hamilton said, “It is a damning indictment of our education system that one in five children played truant last year from Scotland’s schools.

“More worrying is that, according to the Executive, after spending nearly £1million, there has been no improvement.

“With such poor results becoming a regular occurrence, will we now go down the same road we did when statistics recording violence and anti-social behaviour against teachers were quietly phased out?”